Telecommunication carriers are increasingly deploying multi-service packages, or bundled services, to customers to provide reduced overall access charges in an attempt to increase customer retention. For example, the boom in digital subscriber line subscriptions has led many carriers to bundle high bandwidth Internet service with traditional voice services. Recent market trends indicate an extensive consumer demand for these bundled services. Numerous cable carriers also provide bundled services in the form of traditional pay cable television services bundled with high bandwidth cable Internet access. Deregulation in the telecommunication industry that is now allowing long distance carriers to compete with local carriers promises to bring additional bundled services to the consumer. Wireless services are also being bundled with numerous combinations of the above-mentioned services. Already, carriers are feeling the strain of successfully upgrading existing infrastructures to meet the high-bandwidth services being demanded by customers.
Transition networks are commonly utilized to provide customer access to voice and data networks. An access network interfaces with voice and data switches each respectively interfacing with a data network, for example a packet backbone network, and the public switched telephone network. Typically, various classes of voice switches, for example class 4 switches for providing interexchange carrier (IXC) voice services and class 5 switches for providing end office voice services, are required within the transition network. Multiple media gateways are then required to interface with a data access switch.
Significant amounts of labor are expended to maintain and upgrade the transition networks as new services become available. A move to unified access is clearly advantageous and promises to propel emerging technologies that are not easily implemented over current large scale networks, for example voice over IP (VoIP), voice over DSL (VoDSL), UMTS and other wireless formats, TDM, and ATM, to a broader degree of acceptance.